


closing in our distances

by ninemoons42



Series: dance for your heart [7]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: (hey look no more slow build or slow burn), Alternate Universe - Dance, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Inspired by Music, M/M, Noctis is a sweetheart, Prompto is a sweetheart, Recovery, boys being incapable of expressing themselves with words, hey look they actually talk! they ask important questions!, inspired by theater, not actually on stage but the harasser gets smacked down hard, so they do things instead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 23:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12994953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Finally in the thick of rehearsals to bring Project SISI to the stage, Noctis has a busy day: he takes to the stage, laughs with friends, deals with an asshole, and runs for his life.Prompto is right next to him for all of this.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Akumeoi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akumeoi/gifts).



Sunlight pooling on the dark-planed wood of the stage, gathering softly in the heavy still folds of the great red curtains that nearly surround him with their familiar must, where he’s sitting on a bench and trying to catch his breath, where it isn’t yet warm enough that he can really think about sailing into the air, muscles bearing him aloft from one jump to another.

The squat blocky shape of the canteen next to his feet is pitted and scratched. Translucent sturdy plastic, that sits right in a falling-in ray of light: shadows next to it in vivid purple that’s almost black, of the last remaining handful of blueberries. He’s eaten the rest, in the course of drinking the water down, so there’s a little more than half a liter left in the canteen, and he’s still got these last luminous dark treats to look forward to, to keep him going, to keep him alert.

Weight, settling carefully next to him on his bench, and he looks over in time for Luna to stick her tongue out at him.

“Get off the stage,” he says, mock sternly. “You left it. Stay off of it.”

“I didn’t leave it and I can’t: there’s a piano over there and you don’t want to miss me playing it,” she laughs, and she swings her feet in their designer boots for good measure. “And where would you be without me, right now?”

He pretends to scowl, and pretends to pull his feet out of her reach or her range, because he’s barefoot, because her shoes are pointed at the toes and at the heels, and she’s not going to kick him now.

Maybe she will, later, and maybe if he’s good she’ll even kick him without the shoes, without the socks, just the pure impact of her feet knocking into his. 

So he makes terrible faces at her and enjoys the sound of her soaring laugh. Her hair in its braids and its red ribbons, the plush knitted scarf knotted around her neck, the neat lines of her vivid blue eyeliner.

“Guys,” someone calls, and it’s a quieter voice on this nearly empty stage, and it comes from clear across that entire space for dancing and for tracing out emotions, but it catches at Noctis’s ear, and makes him sit up and start getting to his feet.

He doesn’t make it that far -- there’s a hand on his wrist, carefully arresting his movement, and he blinks and looks at Luna, who throws him a knowing little smile, before turning away.

Before she waves with her other hand, and calls toward the man who’s just appeared out of the stage-left shadows, “You look really nice!”

“You think so?”

“I know so,” Luna says.

And Noctis looks up to nod.

That same sunlight that falls muted onto the curtains and onto the floor, seems to float and blaze around the man who’s carefully making his way to center stage.

Oh, it’s not the first time for Prompto to be standing where he is now: seven weeks since Noctis sealed the deal, seven weeks since the ink’s been left to dry on a series of fusty paperbound contracts detailing things like -- show times and wages for the production staff and all those other things, and now this, where Noctis is finally starting to hear the notes of Luna’s compositions, rippling into the spaces ringed and limited by stage lights. Where he’s finally allowing himself to imagine faceless watchers in the empty boxes rising to the ceiling. Where he’s finally really telling himself this story, the story of someone who really, really just wanted to be alive, by her own definitions of being alive, by her own rules and with her own agency.

Far from the first time: he watches as Prompto tilts his head back -- out of the sunbeams for just a moment, so the freckles seem dulled and the hair falls away from the angles of his face -- then squares his shoulders and looks straight ahead.

And he starts to turn, slow sweeping spiraling circles. Arms rising through long graceful arches as he revolves around that taped-on X between the curtains, warming up, dancing for a moment with nothing but himself to provide the rhythm and the melody -- and the colors, as plaid-patterns in black and blue and green fly through the air, sharp contrast of his leg warmers against the gray dancing clothes and the sober white button-down he’s wearing on top of everything else.

He goes at his own pace, slow at first, deliberate and delicate, before he literally kicks his heels up and lets out a sharp whoop, faster and faster and Noctis hears Luna’s bright laugh rising, exhilarated as she’s caught up in the way Prompto moves.

And then: Prompto stops, and takes one more deep breath. 

Stands to address the empty orchestra properly, and turns his feet out.

Noctis still sometimes has to stare at his own feet when he’s lifting on to them, at the beginning of the day, at the beginning of some rehearsal or another. 

Not so for Prompto, who rolls up smoothly from one foot flat on the floor to a perfectly en-pointe arabesque.

Beat, beat, and then he says, carefully holding himself in arrested motion, “Someone count me in, please.”

Luna blinks.

Noctis exhales, and clears his throat to say: “ _Un, deux, trois_.”

On _trois_ , Prompto whips into a perfect rapidfire fouette and then he’s off through the rest of his warm-up, skittering lightly across the stage and into a series of tightly-controlled leaps and bounds.

It only seems to take a moment -- and Noctis gets to his feet. Rolls his shoulders, shakes out his wrists, does one deep lunge and then the other, before he’s running across the stage into a neat series of forward somersaults, three and four and that brings him right into Prompto’s space, where he’s soaring to loom over Noctis’s head, where Noctis is reaching for his ankle and doesn’t make contact -- 

Pursuit, on the stage, the two of them miming the slash and strike of fencers on the prowl.

When they’re facing each other at stage left Noctis pulls his right arm back, hand closed as if around the shape of a fan, or the shape of a sword -- and Prompto, glaring down at him, seems to sneer as he turns, as he raises his own right arm, fist clenched over his head.

Hold.

Hold.

Backstage, just behind Prompto and the arrogant tilt of his chin, someone sneezes.

And it isn’t just one sneeze, neatly contained and swiftly passing by; it’s a series of loud and explosive sounds --

He honestly can’t tell which one of them breaks first: did he, when he coughed and it turned into half of a laugh? Did Prompto, whose narrowed eyes widened comically in bright surprise with the echoes of the first sneeze?

There’s an even louder sneeze, followed by a sharp “Fuck!” and a low whine.

“Sorry,” Prompto says, and he whirls away, all the imperious lines in his face suddenly gone, grace and tension all but popping audibly out of his frame as he hunches over and covers his face with his hands, and starts to laugh.

And Noctis throws back his own head and laughs, too, hard enough that he’s soon rolling over onto his back, hard enough that he starts gasping, “Stop, stop, that’s making my stomach hurt!”

“I can’t help it!” Prompto gasps, and he’s curling into a compact knot of mirth, he’s hiding his wide wide grin in his knees.

Noctis crawls over to him and throws an arm around his shoulder.

More laughter, echoing back to him -- to the two of them -- and he hears Luna’s voice, and then Nyx’s.

Tap on Noctis’s hand: he watches Prompto grin, and pull away. Watches him get to his feet and plunge into the curtains.

He hears him say, “Sorry we laughed at you, man. It was just bad timing.”

“If it makes you feel better, we were laughing too,” is the reply, like a quiet sort of snort.

Noctis is moving halfway towards those voices when the door at the other end of the theater flies open with a bang that echoes and echoes, eerily like a gunshot, eerily like a blow to the head -- 

“I’m calling the police.” 

Aranea, wind still in her hair, not a pinstripe out of place as she walks with her back turned to the stage and her arms flung out to the sides. 

“You can’t stop me.”

That other voice chills the laughter and the smiles right out of him.

Somehow Luna’s at his side and her hand is on his shoulder, and she’s saying his name, urgent and sweet: “Noctis.”

He takes a step back, and feels her warmth right along his side, and he’s grateful.

Movement from the curtains, Prompto emerging with a sword prop in his hand: elegantly curved blade and a graceful basketwork hilt, nothing like what they’d both been spitballing around for Der Tod in their downtime, but he still looks like the damned thing’s been made to fit him and him alone, especially when Noctis clocks his expression, freckles almost gone in the dark and wary lines of him.

And he wants to be ready to fight, because of the man who’s still advancing on the stage despite the very real presence of Aranea, where she’s planted herself at the bottom of the access stairs.

“Don’t even think about it,” and Noctis looks over to where Nyx is standing several steps behind and above Aranea. He’s not even trying to be subtle: his tool belt is dangling from his loosely-clenched fist. “I wouldn’t put it past you to shove her out of the way, and you’ll regret that if you do.”

“I just came in here to start a conversation,” the man says, oily placating sycophantic tones.

“Don’t,” Luna hisses, and the click of her stiletto heel is loud on the stage.

“Noctis.”

Hand around his free wrist, grounding him: he looks over and says, “Thanks Prompto.”

He’s hemmed in by them, now -- or perhaps he can be steady in their presence.

“Hello Noctis,” the man says.

He schools his face into stillness, and turns back. “Glauca.”

“This is a pleasantly unexpected development,” Titus Glauca says, sweeping a ring-heavy fist to take in the theater. “How could I have thought that you wouldn’t be foolishly determined enough to bring your story to this stage? I applaud your pluck.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a closed venue,” Noctis hears himself say, polite and cool as he brushes past the condescending language.

It’s not his own voice he hears: it’s his mother’s, and that realization makes him smirk, just a little, as he adds, “You ought to know what that means by now. We’re rehearsing. We don’t want anyone from the outside world around here.”

“I freely admit I’m intruding, but -- I was hoping you had reconsidered my offer.”

“I thought you made your offer pretty clear,” Noctis says. “And I know I was only too happy to shoot you down.”

“As I said. I hoped that you would reconsider, given time.”

“There isn’t enough time in the _world_ , you piece of shit,” Aranea growls, after a moment.

“What she said,” and Noctis throws her an ironic wink, and adds: “I told you he’d be back.”

“I don’t want to know how you know that,” she groans. 

“Not the first time this’s happened, remember,” he says. 

To Glauca: “Not the first time you’ve tried to do this to -- other people. So now we’re doing this.”

“And what, pray tell, is _this_?” Glauca’s fake-concerned tone sounds like it’s being ground down around the edges. 

“What, you want me to say it? You had such a way with words, when you were emailing me and Ravus.” Noctis bends one leg at the ankle, and then another: the sun’s moved on and the spot that he’s standing in is no longer warm.

He doesn’t want to leave Luna, or leave Prompto -- so he takes the next best course of action, which is sitting down right where he is. Soles of his feet pressed together, bent knees splayed to the sides; he wraps his hands around his toes and leans forward, keeping his back straight and his eyes on the intruder. 

Twitch, twitch, in Glauca’s eyebrow.

His foot is propped backward now, when he’d been steadily advancing on Aranea before Noctis started talking.

“You were talking about this story, and how you really wanted to support us in telling this story: but you wanted the story to be told your way, and not ours. Because we’re just -- how’d you say it? We’re just the scenery, living scenery, and the story should tell people what you want since you’d be paying for it. Very reasonable. Very privileged.” Noctis lets a little bit of tooth show in his smirk. 

“ -- heard that one before.”

He drops the smirk, and holds Prompto’s gaze, and mirrors that tight-lined mouth. 

Just for a moment. 

And he braces himself on his hands, pushes himself partway up. “But hey, if you don’t want to talk now, I’ll let past you do the talking.”

He thinks Aranea snickers.

But Luna looks down at him with steel in her eyes.

And Prompto? He turns the sword prop so its point is on the floor.

Noctis can feel him tensing for a leap, for a spring.

So he leans into Prompto’s hip -- and feels Prompto shift to lean into him as well.

Lines tightening in Glauca’ face: “Those were privileged communications.”

“Sent in the context of doing business with us, in the matter of this production,” Noctis fires back, “and I didn’t say that, I never said that: you did. You were idiot enough to write that very thing down! I guess we should all be grateful you’re an incompetent moron. Because guess what: you’re here on a good day, when everyone else who’s involved in this project is also present.”

Luna starts, next to him, and pulls her phone out of her bag. “This happens to me all the time,” she complains, and: “Hello?”

“What,” she says, and then she’s holding the phone out at arm’s-length. “Ravus?”

Noctis has the paltry satisfaction of seeing Glauca flinch, even if it’s a very small flinch.

“Like I said. Everyone. Good timing,” Noctis adds, in Luna’s direction. “You psychic or something?”

“We have quite worn that joke into the ground,” Ravus says, and his sigh, tinny, rises in the hushed air of the theater. “Haven’t we? So please come off it. I’m not psychic. I merely felt the need to check in.”

“Good thing you did. Glauca’s here.”

“Is he.”

He’s definitely not imagining the way Glauca’s hand is now shaking.

“Noctis,” Ravus says in that same voice, dark like storm clouds on the move.

“I’d like your permission to read his emails out loud to the rest of the production team,” Noctis says. “In the interests of -- full disclosure.”

“Granted,” is the instant answer. “Just do me a favor. Don’t leave anything out of what I said.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” and Noctis finally gets to his feet and crosses the stage, and he takes his phone from the bag he’d left next to the water bottle. 

The emails in question are -- something he has to brace himself in order to read, much less out loud, in as casual a voice as he can muster.

He’d thrown up after receiving the first one, and the second, and the third: and then he’d forwarded copies to Aranea, Aulea, and Ignis, for safekeeping.

He has to play Sisi, he thinks, suddenly: Glauca thinks of him, and of Ravus, as nothing but pretty marionettes. Things that aren’t alive. That don’t have any feelings other than the ones he assigns them: and he’d had them both pegged for, for what? 

He knows the answer to that question: it had been all but stated in those emails, after all.

All he knows is this: it’s time to cut those strings once and for all.

So he clears his throat and reads, and the emails are repulsive in all the worst ways, and he still has to swallow the bile that rises in his throat when he reads the last of them, so he can properly read Ravus’s response and all of its four-letter words.

Afterwards he drinks a lot of water, and the blueberries do nothing to wash the taste of pure evil off his tongue.

“Ravus,” Luna says, when she breaks the stunned silence.

“Sister,” he says, from her phone.

“Of all the stupid fucking things to do,” she says, the words falling into a growl. “You stubborn _idiot_. Why didn’t you tell me the whole story?”

Long pause, and then: “I didn’t want to linger on any of it. It was hard enough to scrub the conversations from my mind.”

She seems to deflate, a little; but she’s still growling when she speaks again. “Okay. Okay. Fair enough.” She looks up. “You too, Noctis?”

He spreads his hands at her. “What do you think?”

“You shut it down,” she sighs.

“Yeah I did. Do you want me to apologize? I can’t do that.”

“Not expecting you to,” she says.

And she exchanges her phone for the sword in Prompto’s hand. 

He watches her point it at Glauca. “I’ve half a mind to just plant this in your throat and be done with it -- and yes, I know very well that this is a prop. This is not a real sword. I know it. And you know it.”

Even he’d step back at the smile that curls her lips, were it aimed at him.

“And I can’t have a real sword unless a saw counts,” she adds. “So I’ll have to settle for running you through with this.”

Noctis hears the surprised laugh that bursts its way out of Nyx, and resists the urge to look over.

“Knew you’d like that,” Luna says.

“Luna,” Ravus says, still only a voice on the phone.

She doesn’t reply, at least not in words. 

Glauca starts backing away as soon as she brushes past Prompto, and when he turns to run there are two men standing right in his way, right at the doors that he’d come in through: Noctis clocks the shirts they’re wearing, long-sleeved but otherwise identical to the one that Nyx is wearing. 

“Tredd, Axis,” Luna says, now advancing up one of the aisles. 

“He’s all yours, we’re just here to stop him from leaving,” the taller one says.

“Thank you, Tredd.”

Noctis gets to his feet when Luna corners Glauca: and then he can’t hear anything any more, because Luna is only hissing, and Glauca just goes grayer and grayer still, above the collar that’s bunched up in her fist.

“Luna, please.” But Ravus sounds even and not at all quelling. 

“She’s just -- talking,” Prompto says.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Prompto.”

“Oh.”

And Noctis wants to parse that, wants to understand that single sound: but Luna is pushing Glauca away, and her voice is rising again.

“Now would be a good time. Or five minutes ago. Yes? Now: GO.” 

He watches, and hears, Glauca’s gasping run -- past Nyx’s comrades and out the door. 

“I demand details,” Aranea says, breaking the silence.

“As do I,” Ravus says.

“Not much to say. I’ll send you the gist of it tonight,” Luna says. “And if he hasn’t done anything by dinnertime it’ll be all over the Internet anyway and you’ll know what happened, and I don’t have to do a damned thing.”

And: “Noctis?”

He gets to his feet without really thinking about it. “Luna.”

“Thank me later,” she says.

He blinks, completely thrown for a loop.

Until she says: “Take today and tomorrow off, everyone, please. It’ll take me that long to wash that scum off my hands anyway. Back to work bright and early on Thursday, all right?”

“Sounds good to me.” And Noctis watches as Aranea waves at stage left. “Hey you. Text me your address. I’ll get some cake delivered. Thinking you’ll want some, too.”

Cake sounds like a good idea.

So Noctis picks up his things and shoulders his bag, and crosses the stage.

Suddenly he’s weary.

He’s -- past the disgust and the rage and the petty little bite of satisfaction he’d felt at seeing Glauca cut down so thoroughly.

He just wants to get out of here.

“Aranea,” he hears Prompto say. “Cake later. Not now. I’ll text you?”

“Yeah,” he thinks he hears his manager say.

And when Prompto moves he just follows him -- follows those pointe shoes right past all the empty seats, and thence to the underground parking lot.

Only then does he shiver, and dig the car keys out of his pockets, and -- there’s a hand on his wrist, stilling him.

He looks up into Prompto’s concerned eyes.

“Let me take those,” Prompto says.

Noctis blinks.

Hands his keys over.

“Thanks.”

Strange relief, to be slouching over towards the shotgun seat.

He watches as Prompto slides his feet out of his pointe shoes, and into a pair of beaten-down sneakers. Watches him adjust the driver’s seat and all the mirrors, then grab the steering wheel. Confident lines in his wrists, arms nearly at full extension, shoulders relaxed. 

“When did you -- ” 

Prompto smiles, and looks melancholy. “Ardyn’s last mistake,” he says. “He paid for the driving lessons. I drove him around, those last two years -- I had to get a license and everything, and I just -- got myself another set of papers. Then I waited for the right time and I, I finally convinced myself I could just drive the fuck away from him. Which is what I did. Traded the car in, took the money, ran for my life. You know bits of the rest; I ended up here, after all.”

Noctis clamps his mouth shut around the reflexive “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Instead, he says, “Okay, then, what do you want in exchange for driving me around?”

He watches those eyes blink, then crinkle at the corners with real amusement. “You couldn’t afford me.”

And Noctis is grateful for the small laugh that he breathes out.

Prompto grins, and starts the car, and it’s only when they get to the second set of traffic lights that he blinks, and looks over. “Noctis? Where are we going?”


	2. Chapter 2

Rustling, all around him: above him and below him, and coming closer and closer to his right side, because he feels only the solid protective gnarled weight of tree trunk and creeping old root on his left.

He opens his eyes and his sky is part pale-milky blue, part thin ragged sheets of grayish clouds -- mostly, though, he can see the bobbing movement of arching and dividing branches, and every movement, every moment, throws the scents of sap and of falling old leaves down towards him.

And Noctis turns his head to the right: glimpse of grass stains already catching on worn sneakers, on shins exposed to the air, freed from things like leg warmers.

Smell of something warm and soothing: he sits up, and instinctively holds out his hands when he sees the bundle of paper-wrapped packages in Prompto’s arms. “You could have woken me up.”

“You looked very comfortable, and I didn’t want to disturb you,” is the reply, and Noctis scoots a little to the left, and there is just enough space in this hollow of dry soil and crunching grass and tree roots for Prompto to fit next to him.

“Dunno what you call this morning, then, if not disturbed,” Noctis sighs. “Or disturbing. Maybe it was more disturbing. I mean, we hardly got to do anything really fun before things went all to shit.”

Freckles scrunching up as Prompto makes a face, a little like regret and a little like chagrin. “That was some morning, all right. You think Luna’s going to go on a rampage again tonight?”

“I don’t want to think about it,” he mutters, and in apology he leans his forehead briefly against a shoulder swathed in broadcloth. “I -- I mean, it’s gonna be haunting us for a while yet. Me and Ravus, and -- other people.”

Blink, blink, confused blue eyes peering in at him. “Wait, what? That asshole couldn’t have made the mistake of sending those emails to other people who weren’t you.”

“He didn’t, but I did: I forwarded them to my mom, and to Aranea,” Noctis says. “Ignis too.”

“Oh. Ouch. But safekeeping, right? Like backup?”

“Yeah. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Yeah, no, let’s not.”

So Noctis tears his paper bag open to find two thick planks of dark-brown bread, and the gooey savory scent of melted cheese. “Oh, this looks nice,” he says, and he takes a bite of the sandwich, and there’s pesto layered in it, too. “This’s good, Prompto.”

“Didn’t know what to pick so I just asked them to recommend stuff,” is the response. “Everyone likes that one, they said.”

He looks over, and helpfully Prompto tilts the cross-section of his sandwich in his direction: cream-colored filling, studded with chunks of brown meat and greens. “What is that?”

“Tuna salad. I love tuna salad.”

“It’s all right I guess,” Noctis mutters as he takes another bite. Chews. Swallows. “I’d rather eat egg salad; Ignis does this thing where he makes it with lots of curry and spices.”

“In a sandwich? The more I think about it, the better it sounds,” Prompto says, and then he’s tearing open a bag of tortilla chips. “Well, you know. Ignis cooks like a temple full of gods.”

Noctis grins, and offers his smartphone. “Tell him that. It’ll be something new for him to hear. He’s heard me and Gladio sing his praises enough, probably sick and tired of us by now.”

“Gotta keep the chef’s ego stoked,” is the response, laced with a laugh. “If he gets bored with all of us we’ll wind up not eating. Or living on takeout.”

“Yeah, no, rather not,” Noctis says, and then it’s his turn to be helpful, so he cracks open the two small cartons of milk and passes one over. 

“How did we ever survive without him?”

“Again: rather not think about it.”

He chews through his sandwich, and offers his canteen, and laughs when Prompto splashes out some of the water in trying to eat one of the last blueberries.

“Not as fun when it’s water-logged,” is the verdict.

“Have the rest of the thing,” he says. “If we make it back to my place. Should still be a handful, or two.”

“Which means you have no idea what to do with the rest of your day. We didn’t even go here and yet -- here we are, at a pretty university, when everyone else is not here.”

“Not like you have any better ideas,” Noctis teases.

“Oh, sure I do. I could go hang out at the coffee shop, and -- well Crowe mentioned she wants to start hanging up the holiday lights. I could get that done for her.”

“Can I help?” He dusts the crumbs away from his hands and leans back against the tree.

Before Prompto can answer, there’s a shout of “No no no don’t -- !”

Noctis looks around, wary, expecting something alarming: but the only things that heave into view, that dash past them towards the clutch of people in jerseys and shin guards and spiked shoes, are two large dogs, and the girl chasing their trailing leashes.

“Cute,” Prompto says.

But he looks a little relieved, too.

Noctis grins, lopsided, as the dogs tumble all over each other, wrestling in the grass: and then the girl catches up to them and they bounce towards her, all but knock her down, and she’s laughing brightly, surrounded by wagging tails and lolling tongues. 

“Did you have a dog? Dogs?” Prompto asks, quietly.

Wistful smile, when he glances over. “Nah. Not fair to bring a dog along when you’re living in hotel rooms, shuttling around from place to place. I mean it was possible to do that even then. Easier now, sure. But still not fair if the dog had to spend, like, lots of time getting quarantined and shit.”

Prompto makes another face. “Never thought of that. Didn’t do a lot of traveling.”

“I know.”

“But, huh, that’s strange.”

He watches as Prompto scoots forward, and then lies back, hands cushioning the back of his head from rough brownish-gray bark. “I miss my dog.”

Noctis reaches out to him, and pats his hip. “Right, I remember that. You told us.”

“I still want to have a dog. But -- I’d have to get Crowe to agree, right? I could get a dog and have it stick around in the coffee shop, but, again, Crowe.” 

“Cats?” Noctis suggests, after a moment.

“I’m all right with cats, I guess, I mean I’m not enthusiastic? But I don’t have any bad feelings about them. I don’t know about her. But yeah, I see where you’re going there. Cats like places like, coffee shops. Soft and warm and there’s people to bother if they want attention.”

“Lot like people, then,” Noctis says, and laughs softly. 

“Some people are dogs and some people are cats,” Prompto says, nodding.

“Would you say you’re a dog, or a cat?”

“Why are you asking me that question? You ought to tell me.”

“Dog,” Noctis says, after a moment. “Puppy.”

“I can live with that.” Bright freckled grin. “And you? I don’t have to think about it. You’re a cat.”

“Meow.” Noctis grins back.

“Yup,” and Prompto closes his eyes. “All you need is a tail.”

Noctis is halfway to falling asleep, himself, with his knee snug against Prompto’s ribcage, when someone yells, “Hey shut the fuck up! They’re about to start the bells!”

“Prompto,” he says.

“I heard.”

Leaves stuck in blond hair as Prompto sits up.

Noctis grins and brushes the back of his hand against the back of Prompto’s head.

Slow and sweet and resonant: the voices of the bells fill the air, and Noctis closes his eyes and -- doesn’t try to identify the music.

He just listens, and the lower tones thrill through him, shiver through his bones and make him hold his breath. 

The higher tones are like trills in the back of his head, sweet and complicated and intricate.

“I think I know that song,” Prompto says, and it’s only half a dozen words, but they’re slow and quiet and mesmerized.

“Tell me,” and Noctis doesn’t know why he’s whispering, or why it’s better for him to whisper, when the bells ring in the clear air and echo off the buildings across the way, like layered voices singing just a little out of sync.

“I think it was a piano piece,” and Prompto’s voice is so quiet that Noctis has to lean in to really hear him. “I can’t remember who wrote it. Or when I heard the original. But it was -- before, like, before, when I wasn’t dancing yet. I can remember those notes, the sequence of them, and -- I wonder if I wasn’t listening to someone play the piano?”

Noctis smiles, a little, and nudges him for encouragement.

“You think Luna’ll mind if I asked her about this?”

“No,” he says. “She really won’t.”

“You’ve got good friends, Noctis.”

“I’m lucky,” Noctis murmurs back.

The bells have begun to play another melody, this one completely unfamiliar, by the time Prompto says, “Lend me some of that luck.”

“What makes you think you still need it? Wasn’t my favorites Ignis made last time we had dinner at their place.” He laughs, softly. “I mean, I like everything he makes so that’s not really the thing. But he knows you really like that stew thing you eat at that restaurant. The one Aranea takes us to. Went to the trouble of looking for the right spices because he wanted you to have something good, didn’t he? I mean. If you’re not getting that he likes you, like, where the fuck you been?”

“You know just what to say, Noctis.” Prompto’s laugh is warm and sweet and low, and Noctis wants to hear it so much.

So much so that he leans over and falls right into Prompto’s lap.

“Shit, sorry,” he mutters.

He’s trying to get up -- but there’s a hand on his shoulder, gently weighing him down.

He blinks up into a rosy flush, into dark freckles, into long eyelashes casting shadows.

“Stay if you like,” Prompto is murmuring. “I mean, where you are right now.”

He still feels like he has to ask. “You want me to?”

A single nod of an answer.

And when the bells finally play a song he’s familiar with, he can’t help but grin, and hum along.

“I know that, too,” Prompto says, about a quarter of the way through.

“Yeah you do,” Noctis says, reluctantly interrupting himself. “I don’t care what you call it, _Clair de lune_ or _Suite bergamasque_. My mom used to dance it as a solo, in one of her concerts. There’s video, online, if you want -- I’ll give you the link.”

“Later,” Prompto says, and the hand that’s still on his shoulder kneads, gently. “Listen first.”

Noctis closes his eyes. Places his hand over Prompto’s.

The piece ends and the bells trail off at last, and in the soft echoes of their wake, he can just about make out his name: “Noctis?”

There’s a voice in the back of his brain that’s telling him to keep his eyes closed: and that’s what he does. “Yeah?”

“Sorry you had such a shitty day.”

He laughs, a little. “It was shitty, yeah. But at least I got to see you with a sword. That makes up for it some.”

Snort. “It’s not even the right kind of sword.”

“We’ll get there.” He hums, again: a snip of Luna’s work. “And then I can’t be sorry for this. We listened to bells. You drive like seven demons. I mean that in a good way. I like that a lot.”

Prompto laughs, too. “Just as long as I don’t get us killed.”

“It would suck to get killed in a car crash,” Noctis agrees, “because then we wouldn’t be able to dance, and -- and then we couldn’t do this any more.”

The knee beneath him goes still.

“Wanna explain that?” 

He opens his eyes.

Smiles, just a little.

“Noctis.”

He sits up -- hates that the back of his head grows cool very quickly -- he leans in and brushes his knuckles over Prompto’s cheek. “That kind of thing.” Deep breath. “Unless it’s not, not what you were thinking of.”

“Is this, this thing, just about -- dancing? About -- playing roles on the stage?”

Fear, now, in the corners of Prompto’s eyes, gathering like small crystalline weights.

“I -- you asked that question and we need to answer it,” Noctis hears himself say. “I guess it’s about time we talked about this. And -- no. It’s up to you really. Because this can be about dancing, and only that. If that’s what you want then that’s what we’ll do.

“And if this is about -- more than just Sisi, more than just Der Tod -- ”

He tries to smile. 

Thinks about the past seven weeks: and it had been like opening the floodgates, to ask Prompto into the production, and afterwards spend hours lying quietly together on the floor of his apartment.

Sketching props in shaky lines on the same sheet of paper, the two of them snatching the single pencil from each other, when there was a cup full of pens nearby. A thoughtless exchange of takeout cartons, so he could try Prompto’s order of hot and sour soup, and so that Prompto could eat some of his order of deep-fried shrimp in their shells. Prompto’s feet in his lap at the end of a day of dancing, propped up and still. A single set of headphones to share a cappella harmonies on YouTube, and -- only once -- the instrumental piece created by a lone piano player, her hands coaxing dolorous chords from her piano, leaving the two of them crying quietly together into each other’s shoulders.

He thinks about those things, and doesn’t talk about them; he spreads his hands instead. “It’s about what you want, Prompto, because I’m offering. Just let me know. And -- you don’t have to decide now. I really don’t want to pressure you into anything. Swear, that’s the last thing I want to do.”

“Noctis.”

He blinks, and licks his lips, and: “Yeah?”

“You remember that really sad piano thing?”

He feels his own cheeks flare up with warmth, and keeps meeting Prompto’s eyes. “I’m thinking about it right now.”

“You held me afterwards.”

“I thought you were holding me; I was the one who started crying after all.” He can’t help but chuckle, just a little, at himself.

“Should have done this, then.”

This is not new: Prompto coming closer, closer, almost to blur out the blue eyes and the lines surrounding his smile.

This is new: the warmth of his cheek brushing against Noctis’s skin, and then the soft press of his mouth. 

So new he stares, and stares, and it takes him a terrible long time to blink, and ask. “You wanted to do that?”

“Been wanting to do that.”

He’s still trying to wrap his head around it. “Been wanting to -- I wish you’d said something. I could have been kissing you all this time.”

And Prompto grins, suddenly, brighter than the sky, brighter than the sun that he can’t see anyway for the tree and its leaves. “So kiss me.”

The grass cools all around as the breeze kicks up: but he’s reeling him in again, soft warm laugh shared between them before the kiss, and Noctis tastes blueberries and milk and breadcrumbs on Prompto’s lips, and the echoing song of the bells playing _Clair de lune_.

Prompto’s laughing, too, when they break apart: and he says, sweet and easy, “Again? Please?”

“Yeah, yeah,” and there aren’t any more words in him, or any other thoughts: just the feeling of Prompto, and the way that they kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> And that concludes the main storyline of this AU -- but don't worry, there's an epilogue still to come! Please watch out for that!
> 
> ninemoons42 on Tumblr: [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)


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